Quality Technology Services (QTS)

At a Glance

Summary

Sehgal found savings for QTS in the areas of carbon, water and electricity.

Goals

Sukrit Sehgal spent his summer in Atlanta evaluating Data Center energy efficiency projects for QTS, one of the nation's largest data center providers. While QTS had already initiated energy efficiency projects, Sehgal was asked to validate and improve on them.

Solutions

Sehgal identified projects on cooling containment, temperature monitoring, lighting retrofits and water conservation that offered significant savings on all three fronts – electricity, carbon and water. Upon observing QTS’ electricity bills, Sehgal found out that since a large part of a data center’s electricity cost is due to cooling, any solution that can help manage and make cooling more efficient could lead to great results. Additionally, since the majority of QTS’ data centers run on cooling with the help of cooling towers, water reclamation could lead to significant savings as well. To make QTS a better steward of the environment, Sehgal helped develop recycling and e-cycling plans at the organization level and also develop a sustainability fund that can maintain QTS’ sustainability efforts without the need to depend on financial approvals on a regular basis. Sehgal also helped in the formulation of QTS’ sustainability policy so that QTS’ efforts were visible throughout the organization and for its customers as well.

Potential Impact

By enrolling QTS in demand response programs and implement alternate energy solutions, Sehgal helped QTS become more energy independent. Sehgal’s analysis showed that if the proposed projects were rolled out to even a couple of QTS’ facilities, QTS could cut 60 million kWh of electricity per year, 40,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually and 15 million gallons of water annually. Over their lifetime, these projects could save QTS $4.3 million in net operating costs. QTS plans to invest $10 million to implement these projects.